The Role of the University as Mediator in a Skills Ecosystem Approach to VET
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Openjuru, George , Zeelen, Jacques
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434907 , vital:73115 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
- Description: In this chapter, we focus particularly on the mediating role of the university, in close connection with vocational institutions and informal community actors, in developing an inclusive approach to vocational education and training (VET) through an expanded social ecosystem for skills model. Here we draw upon lessons learnt from the Alice and Gulu cases on communitybased approaches to establishing an expanded skills ecosystem approach to VET in Africa. The main ques-tion guiding this chapter relates to the possible mediating role of the university to enhance a regional expanded ecosystem for supporting quality vocational education that is also rele-vant to its context, including emergent possibilities to build skills and livelihoods linked to just transitions. Universities are not VET centres as conventionally understood, but they can contribute to VET in various ways. Most often, universities are identified as contributing to the qualifications and training of VET educators. In this chapter, we take a different angle and consider the role of engaged research and community engagement as two approaches that can contribute to the advancement of an expanded social ecosystem model with positive benefits for VET institutions. Drawing on insights gained in the earlier chapters of this book requires us to take into account several important realities as previously dis-cussed, as well as key ingredients for the development of a regional skills ecosystem of vocational education, as demon-strated by the two cases considered in this chapter.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Vocational education and training for African development: A literature review
- Authors: McGrath, Simon , Ramsarup, Presha , Zeelen, Jacques , Wedekind, Volker , Allais, Stephanie , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Monk, David , Openjuru, George , Russon, Jo-Anna
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182418 , vital:43828 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2019.1679969"
- Description: The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals, communities, and organisations to generate and maintain enhanced and just livelihood opportunities. However, the major current theoretical approaches to VET are not up to this challenge. In the context of Africa, we seek to address this problem through a presentation of literatures that contribute to the theorisation of this new vision. They agree that the world is not made up of atomised individuals guided by a “hidden hand”. Rather, reality is heavily structured within political economies that have emerged out of contestations and compromises in specific historical and geographical spaces. Thus, labour markets and education and training systems have arisen, characterised by inequalities and exclusions. These specific forms profoundly influence individuals’ and communities’ views about the value of different forms of learning and working. However, they do not fully define what individuals dream, think and do. Rather, a transformed and transformative VET for Africa is possible.
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- Date Issued: 2020